Progress Log 1/8/21 - Skills, Animations, Item Quality and Hazel! (Patreon)

Time for the first progress log of 2021. We’re on track to have a new build released somewhere between the 15th-20th of this month! Here is what we’ve been doing.

Skill System Framework pretty much completed

The skill system that we’ve mentioned is now in place and players can level up both Farming and Foraging.

The rest of the skill trees are in-game but it’s not currently possible to earn EXP for those until those mechanics are fully implemented.

Some of the passive skills that can be earned include things like foraging double mushrooms and increasing crop quality. This leads us to the next thing!

Implemented Item Quality System

We realized that it would make sense to include a quality mechanic for things that the player can find around the world.

Some items are given a base quality roll and then the player’s skill bonuses are applied on top of that to give a rating between 1 and 3 stars. We do plan to add a 4th “special” rarity down the line, but for now, it’s capped at 3. The main thing that this will affect is how much money you can get for selling high-quality goods to certain NPCs. It will hopefully be an incentive for players to take good care of their crops and pay attention to factors that could affect quality.

Replaced Vine Scene with Story Narrative Scene

The crystal vine scene at the beginning of the game has been replaced with a new one that better fits the narrative we’re setting up. In this scene, the player finds a crystal fragment that will play a crucial role in the story to come.

This scene then transitions normally to the Kaneko bed scene that’s currently in place.

Working on Tool Usage Animations

Some basic animations and particle effects were added to tools to give the player sprite some more life.

We will probably continue to tweak these as we go along since they are admittedly a bit rough.

Eating doesn’t have an animation due to not being able to move the player’s arm all the way up to the mouth without making it look too weird, but it does have a particle that changes color depending on what you ate!

Story Quest/Meeting Hazel is next, trying to squeeze it in before the 15th.

The last thing we’re trying to squeeze in this month is a bit more story content. In order to do this, we need to finish implementing Hazel’s dialogue and overworld sprite, which is well underway.

Her main expressions are completed and it’s really just the small overworld version and then it’s on to story work.

There’s a ton of music work that needs to get done too so we’ll probably need to frontload that in one of the coming months.

Hope everyone has been doing well,

-Vanis & Doku